Papers | Articles | Presentations

Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality – Abridged

by Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen and Steve Zaffron

We present a positive model of integrity that, as we distinguish and define integrity, provides powerful access to increased performance for individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. Our model reveals the causal link between integrity and increased performance, quality of life, and value-creation for all entities, and provides access to that causal link. Integrity is thus a factor of production as important as knowledge and technology, yet its major role in productivity and performance has been largely hidden or unnoticed, or even ignored by economists and others.

Four Ways of Being that Create the Foundations of A Great Personal Life, Great Leadership and A Great Organization

By Werner H. Erhard and Michael C. Jensen

In this paper we argue that the four ways of being we identify as constituting the foundation for being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership are also the foundation for an extraordinary organization and the foundation of an extraordinary personal life. We start with a brief overview of each of these four foundations before going into an expanded discussion of each.

Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model

“How does one teach leadership in a way that not only informs [students] about leadership but also transforms them into actually being leaders?”

That is the question asked by the editors in the introductory chapter of the book “The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being”. In this paper (which appears as Chapter 16 in that book) the authors define a new approach to creating leaders; an approach that focuses on the being of being a leader and the actions of the effective exercise of leadership.

Integrity: Without it Nothing Works

Interview of Michael Jensen by Karen Christensen on the topic of integrity for Rotman Magazine

There is confusion between integrity, morality and ethics. In our much longer (and as yet incomplete) paper on the topic (see “Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality” (available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625)) my co-authors, Werner Erhard and Steve Zaffron and I, distinguish integrity, from morality and ethics in the following way. Integrity in our model is honoring your word. As such integrity is a purely positive phenomenon. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad, right vs. wrong behavior. Like the law of gravity the law of integrity just is, and if you violate the law of integrity as we define it you get hurt just as if you try to violate the law of gravity with no safety device. The personal and organizational benefits of honoring one’s word are huge — both for individuals and for organizations — and generally unappreciated.